Brilliant Corners

The Manley Mahi
No matter what manufacturers may claim about the neutrality, transparency, and vanishingly low distortion of their products, every audio component has a flavor, something you might justly call a personality. (If they didn't, what would we write about in these pages?) This is particularly true of tube amplifiers, the patchouli-and–rose-quartz–wearing art students of hi-fi. At this moment, I have a good half-dozen tube amps living in my loft, and each has a vividly expressed character that I can describe in a few sentences.

Except one. Well, two. Over a good chunk of the past year, I've been sharing my home with a pair of Manley Mahi monoblocks (footnote 2). These hexagonal little amplifiers have their model designation inscribed across the top of their chassis in large letters, so when placed side by side they spell out the name of the uncommonly tasty green-and-blue ray-finned fish from the family Coryphaenidae. This visual joke is typical of EvaAnna Manley's peculiar, geeky sense of humor. What isn't a joke is the Mahis' sophisticated sound and much-higher-than-average ability to make emotional sense of musical performances. But the factor that sets them apart from most tube amps I've heard is their refusal to impose a personality, which we might also call an aesthetic, onto the music they reproduce.

Let's look a little more closely at what we talk about when discussing a tube amplifier's personality. Though the power supply and the output transformers determine a lot about an amp's performance, the choice of output tube and circuit topology determines much of its sonic flavor. Take the Fezz Audio Silver Luna Prestige I reviewed for the August issue: It sounded a lot (though not entirely) like other push-pull EL34 amplifiers I've heard, possessed of a strong sense of drive, slightly warmish and thick mids, a punchy bass response, and a certain sweetness. The Line Magnetic LM-845IA integrated, which relies on a single 845 output tube per channel, has an entirely different presentation: It plays with striking force and physicality, bell-like clarity, great PRaT, and outstanding bass, though it doesn't always track the tiniest musical nuances. Or consider single-ended amps that use 300B tubes, like those lovely Wrights. Their sound tends to be even more distinctive: hugely colorful, often ultradetailed in the mids, featuring enveloping soundstages, occasionally puffy bass, and the kind of high-contrast, shimmering textures that some listeners describe as psychedelic.

Similar characterizations can be made about amplifiers that use 6L6s, 6550s, 2A3s, 45s, and virtually every tube in between. Of course these are generalizations—each amplifier provides its own take on these familial profiles—but like a recipe, they can be helpful at sussing out an amplifier's flavor. We might then infer that the more distinctive the sonic flavor an amplifier offers, the more it favors certain types of music. Right?

The push-pull Mahis, which retail for $6599/pair, use four EL84s per side. Among output tubes, the EL84 is the runt of the litter and doesn't get much respect. With its unimpressive size and straight-sided glass envelope, it looks forgettable next to the zaftig, curvaceous 300B or even the thick'n'lovely KT66. Yet these relatively inexpensive, high-transconductance pentodes are magical. I've never heard an EL84 amp I didn't like.

"The EL84 is a triode lover's tube," Herb Reichert told me recently. I think what he meant is that they can offer the clarity, articulation, and textural explicitness of a good triode. But unlike a 300B, the EL84 isn't flashy and doesn't make a fuss. It has an appealing humility. Think of a row of Shaker pegs as opposed to a Lamborghini.

As with every Manley product I've heard, much attention has been paid to the robustness and speed of the power supply. As a result, the company harnesses the EL84's perky, friendly, approachable sound to create something quite interesting: amplifiers with all the musical awesomeness of tubes but very little flavor of their own.

Two switches on the Mahi chassis made these monoblocks even more distinctive. The first allows the listener to select among three levels of global negative feedback. I appreciate this feature, as it allowed me to experience for myself how feedback works in this circuit rather than relying on received wisdom. With the Mahis connected to the Klipsch La Scalas, increasing feedback firmed up the bass response and beefed up power output at the expense of liveliness and color. For me, at their maximum feedback setting, the Mahis ceased to communicate emotionally, sounding relatively grayish and closed down. I much preferred the minimum setting, corresponding to 3dB of feedback; it allowed for the most vivid sound and explicit emotional connection while keeping a firm hand on the bass.

The second switch allows a choice of pentode or triode operation. The latter setting halves the amp's 40 watts of power while taking two of the EL84s' internal elements out of the circuit path. Triode mode increased the clarity (though not the colorfulness) of the already very clear sounding Mahis, but I kept returning to the pentode setting for a little more grunt and, more importantly, fun. In triode mode, the amps sounded shorn of something more than watts, reminding me of Einstein's adage that everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler.

Listening to The Weed Tree (LP, Drag City DC736), from the short-lived but beloved Philly-based psych-folk ensemble Espers, I was struck by the way the Mahis rendered the arrangement of the traditional ballad "Black Is the Color (Of My True Love's Hair)." They embodied every sonic iota of the track's shimmering, haunting bells, surrounding them with plenty of air and placing them audibly at the back of the soundstage—which was as wide as my room allows. And they reproduced Helena Espvall's mournful cello with such immediacy, color, and emotional wallop that I may have teared up for a moment.

Next, I switched to The Sea and Cake's self-titled first record (LP, Thrill Jockey THRILL 016). When the Chicago-based trio released it in 1994, it injected a new strain into indie rock: Theirs was a quiet, intricate, self-effacing sound, evoking Krautrock bands like Can, UK folkies like Bert Jansch, and jazz elements that bring to mind Miles Davis's In a Silent Way. When it came out, I had never heard anything like it, and it still strikes me as one of the most original and enigmatic pop records of its time. On "Bring My Car I Feel to Smash It," making sense of the densely woven mix of Eric Claridge's droning bass line, John McEntire's simmering drums, Archer Prewitt's finger-picked guitar, and Sam Prekop's disaffected vocal requires an amplifier capable of a lucid, sure portrayal of pace, rhythm, and timing. The Mahis pulled this off with aplomb, making this sinuous post-rock track downright danceable.

If you think little amplifiers with little output tubes don't make big-amp dynamics, you should hear the Mahis with the La Scalas, which work together like avocado and toast. On "Sabali" from the superbly recorded Welcome to Mali (16/44.1 FLAC, Nonesuch/Qobuz) by Malian pop duo Amadou & Mariam, the voice that first appears in the right channel hit with a force that glued me to the sofa and left me excited and slightly scared. Bass response was terrific, if not as highly damped and iron-fisted as with a solid state amplifier like the Ayre AX-5 Twenty, but that's to be expected from a moderately powered tube amplifier. And the Mahis played these tracks with excellent (but not outstanding) tone color, rendering instruments with great separation and timbral accuracy. Most importantly, they were superb at communicating the subtleties of the music's flow as well as its emotional thrust.

The little amps from Chino, California, brought this lofty level of performance without leaving much of a fingerprint on the proceedings, sounding less sonically conspicuous than any tube amplifiers I know. To get a handle on what I was hearing, I compared them to the Manley Neo-Classic SE/PP 300B monoblocks ($11,899/pair). These long, slim amp (above), which uses two 300Bs per side, offer an option of parallel single-ended or push-pull mode. Compared to the Mahis, these amps, in either configuration, turned up the color saturation and textural contrasts and offered much of the ultravivid 300B light show with more power, drive, and grip than many SETs. But are they better than the less-expensive Mahis? Though the Neo-Classics sound more "exotic" and possibly more exciting, the Mahis presented the music in a more direct, less fussy way that was just as effective at revealing the musicians' interplay and intent. Because of their sonically agnostic nature, the Mahis aced every genre of music I threw at them, from the delicate sonorities of the Emerson String Quartet playing Bartók to the crunchy, processed din of "Sharp Dressed Man"—it turns out I still love the song in middle age!

This musical breadth and their energetic, approachable, largely faultless sound make the Manley Mahis a pretty compelling proposition at a price that strikes me as entirely sane. If your speakers and room can make a big noise with 40 watts, then these petite but never petite-sounding amplifiers will probably delight you, doing justice to all but the most ambitious systems. They will allow your favorite recordings to excite, inform, and inspire you, like an audiophile version of my Fisher Vinyl Grinder: a magic box, now with good sound.

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Footnote 2: Manley Laboratories, Inc., 13880 Magnolia Ave., Chino, CA 91719. Tel: (909) 627-4256. Web: manleylabs.com.